The Long-Standing Online Campaign, beginning in Germany, travelling through Italy and Greece to the Sea of Azov.

Saturday, April 29, 2017

Kefe

Here are the bare bones of a map surrounding Kefe, in the Crimea:

The Captain will let you off the boat on the 19th of May. You'll have to pay full price up to that number of days; so I know you paid half price for three. Please make that up and then the remaining two days to get to Kefe.

Kefe is surrounded by a dry deciduous forest, with a tiny productive plain that includes Kefe and another market town, Soldaia, which is the blank group of hexes to the west of Kefe. I will create these soon. Above Kefe is a high range of hills and semi-mountains, 1600-2500 feet in height, very poor in food production but hugely productive in woods, iron ore and building stone. The darkest brown hexes are unoccupied hinterland; the rest should be somewhat clear to you if you are reading the Worlds from Scratch posts.

The hexes adjacent to Krym are not forest, but steppe (very productive plain, as this country has been occupied for millennia and well-developed). Beyond Krym it remains largely occupied by farms, farms and more farms.

There are little villages in the 3 and 4-type hexes; and these I shall add also. I thought I should at least get the bare bones of the environment up for you so you can think for a bit. Look for me to be improving the content in the next few hours (though I am going out for a brief walk).

Kefe itself is a strong Greek and Tatar population, very commercial in outlook, dedicated to collecting all those hammers up in the hills and processing them out through the port. That should be enough information to get the party started.

WEATHER

At 3pm in the afternoon on the 19th of May, the weather is cool, with a good, moderate breeze blowing steadily out of the west, the very same wind that brought you a hundred miles in just 16 hours. The sky is clear and blue, perfect conditions for comfortably doing work.

Would somebody be able to e-mail me the market list: sofiathemonk@gmail.com. The drive is blocked from work.

In town I'd like us to:- re-supply- determine a route to Rosk from here either by sea or by land - maybe explore a little bit if Alexis and you two are willing. The sorts of campaign posts I miss are the great travelogue ones where Alexis really brings the world to life. This region looks ripe for such play but I know it takes some effort on the part of the DM and am sensitive to current circumstances.

What if we took a wide arc approach to making for Krym, where we intentionally skirt the edges of or move within those darker brown mountain hexes? Alternately, I'm assuming the lighter brown hill/ Mountie hexes with all of those hammers are filled with mines, quarries & logging operations. We could just try traveling between those.

Another market question, I have the Kefe file (thank you Alexis), didn't there used to be columns showing what you could sell and for how much? I'd like to sell off some loot I've been lugging around (2 glaives and a crossbow... possibly more depending on the answer to the weight allowance question above).

A comfortable weight for a camel is 330 lbs, but they can carry up to 990. A comfortable weight for a donkey is 88 lbs., with a max of 176.

Sorry, Sofia, I removed those columns because I was unhappy with the formula. It was a lot of work to make a new one from scratch given changes with the upgrade for the prices table I created last year, so I let it go. Sell whatever you want, as much as you want, for 40% of the buying price.

Sofia, you also said your goal was to make your way to a market. You're at a market. So I'm confused about that.

Kismet, I hate to make the hexes ugly with more numbers. Could you just use NE, NW, W, SW, SE and E as the six directions you can go, and manage these one hex at a time? Or give me a town you wish to travel to? You have to move into one hex before moving into the next one.

Remember that all the brown hexes shown on the map are forested; so the hexes without numbers are forested with no regular paths. No. 7 hexes will have paths but no roads. There is a road from Kefe to Soldaia and to Krym. There is a very minor road from Soldaia to Kerket. I will add these roads into the map eventually, but just for now that's where they are. These are dry deciduous forests, so they will have lots of low, thorny shrubs. Count on 3-4 miles a day through a type-8 hex (no number), and 5-8 miles a day through a type-7 hex.

There are only three other market places in the Crimea, with two of them showing on the map. One is Soldaia, directly to the west of Kefe. The second is Aqmescit, the place from which you're banned because you're not of Islam. The third is Cherzeti, not showing on the map, because it is to the east past Krym.

With this system, you may assume anywhere smaller than 4 is too small to have anyone able to exchange more than the immediately produced good ~ timber, iron ore, that sort of thing. Type-4 hexes or better will probably have stockyards, while Type-3 hexes or better will have a town market (which is just that one table inside the prices list). Type 2 hexes or better may have a vintner's, a puddler, a baker, a fishmonger (if on the coast) or a blacksmith. Don't expect more than that from the hinterland.

To clarify, traveling to a market was for purposes of resupplying later, Alexis. In other words, I didn't want to strike off totally into the wilderness without a plan to re-supply eventually.

Sofia has cooking and eating implements so we can buy bulk food vs. the more expensive rations. If you like, I will buy enough for 14 days for the three of us to travel and carry it on my pack animal and let you know the cost. I will complete my market purchases and sales, update my character sheet and be ready to go this morning.

I'm on-board with Kismet's described route. We strike out NW from Kefe, toward the "#7" hills and then NE into the other "#7" hills making generally for Yachmin. From there we can strike due north to make for the north coast of Azov and find our way eventually through to Cumana.

So, two weeks of traveling with a little bit of margin for combat days costs us each 12 gp. That's potatoes with peas cooked in oil and water and seasoned with bacon, salt and paprika. There's a keg of ale and two sacks of apples for treats. Prepared travel rations for the same length of time (and no ale!) would be 42 gp each. I trust everybody's OK with my choices. You must buy your own feed for your mounts and I recommend healing slaves and torches for everybody.

Market sales: 1 glaive (keeping the other one), 1 heavy crossbow

Market buys: 8 sacks of potatoes, 6 lbs of bacon, 84 man-day supply of salt, paprika, 2 flasks of olive oil, 2 sacks of apples, 1 sack of peas, 1 keg of ale, 4 iron daggers, a wool cloak to replace the one ruined fighting the blob, a camel, 2 healing salves, a dozen torches, a saddle. The saddle is for tying sacks to the camel, I don't expect to ride it much.

I hate to bring this up, but does anyone have a sage ability that will let them handle a camel or a donkey? These are working animals now and cannot just be bought an employed. One has to know what one's doing.

Ditto boys, I spent a small fortune replacing my four daggers but got a lot back for the glaive I sold. Your iron pot will come in handy for our potato stew, Kismet. I was going to buy a pot to supplement my two pans until I saw it was like 160 gold.